DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. Milvus vs. Redis vs. Tarantool vs. TerarkDB

System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. Milvus vs. Redis vs. Tarantool vs. TerarkDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A DBMS designed for efficient storage of vector data and vector similarity searches

Popular in-memory data platform used as a cache, message broker, and database that can be deployed on-premises, across clouds, and hybrid environments

Redis focuses on performance so most of its design decisions prioritize high performance and very low latencies.

In-memory computing platform with a flexible data schema for efficiently building high-performance applications

A key-value store forked from RocksDB with advanced compression algorithms. It can be used standalone or as a storage engine for MySQL and MongoDB

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Vector DBMS

Key-value store

Multiple data types and a rich set of operations, as well as configurable data expiration, eviction and persistence

Document store
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Key-value store

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store

with RedisJSON
Graph DBMS

with RedisGraph
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

with RediSearch
Time Series DBMS

with RedisTimeSeries
Vector DBMS

Spatial DBMS

with Tarantool/GIS extension

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	2.78
Rank	#103	Overall
	#3	Vector DBMS

Score	155.94
Rank	#6	Overall
	#1	Key-value stores

Score	1.67
Rank	#143	Overall
	#25	Document stores
	#25	Key-value stores
	#65	Relational DBMS

Score	0.08
Rank	#367	Overall
	#56	Key-value stores

Website

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

milvus.io

redis.com
redis.io

www.tarantool.io

github.com/bytedance/terarkdb

Technical documentation

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

milvus.io/docs/overview.md

docs.redis.com/latest/index.html
redis.io/docs

www.tarantool.io/en/doc

bytedance.larkoffice.com/docs/doccnZmYFqHBm06BbvYgjsHHcKc

Developer

Microsoft

Redis project core team, inspired by Salvatore Sanfilippo

Development sponsored by Redis Inc.

ByteDance, originally Terark

Initial release

1989

2019

2009

2008

2016

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

2.3.4, January 2024

7.2.5, May 2024

2.10.0, May 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Redis Enterprise

Open Source

BSD-2, source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Tarantool Enterprise

commercial

restricted open source version available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

SQLServer Flex @ STACKIT offers a managed version of SQL Server with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.

Zilliz Cloud – Cloud-native service for Milvus

Aiven for Redis: Fully managed in-memory key-value store for all your caching and speedy lookup needs.

Implementation language

C++

C++, Go

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
Windows

Linux
macOS

10.14 or later
Windows

with WSL 2 enabled

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

ported and maintained by Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

BSD
Linux
macOS

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Flexible data schema: relational definition for tables with ability to store json-like documents in columns

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Vector, Numeric and String

partial

Supported data types are strings, hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets, bit arrays, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes

string, double, decimal, uuid, integer, blob, boolean, datetime

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

with RediSearch module

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with RediSQL module

Full-featured ANSI SQL support

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

RESTful HTTP API

proprietary protocol

RESP - REdis Serialization Protocol

Open binary protocol

C++ API
Java API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Crystal
D
Dart
Elixir
Erlang
Fancy
Go
Haskell
Haxe
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Pascal
Perl
PHP
Prolog
Pure Data
Python
R
Rebol
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Swift
Tcl
Visual Basic

C
C#
C++
Erlang
Go
Java
JavaScript
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Rust

C++
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

Lua; Redis Functions coming in Redis 7 (slides and Github)

Lua, C and SQL stored procedures

Triggers

yes

publish/subscribe channels provide some trigger functionality; RedisGears

yes, before/after data modification events, on replication events, client session events

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

Sharding

Automatic hash-based sharding with support for hash-tags for manual sharding

Sharding, partitioned with virtual buckets by user defined affinity key. Live resharding for scale up and scale down without maintenance downtime.

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-source replication

with Redis Enterprise Pack
Source-replica replication

Chained replication is supported

Asynchronous replication with multi-master option
Configurable replication topology (full-mesh, chain, star)
Synchronous quorum replication (with Raft)

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

through RedisGears

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Session Consistency
Tunable Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Causal consistency can be enabled in Active-Active databases
Strong consistency with Redis Raft
Strong eventual consistency with Active-Active

Casual consistency across sharding partitions
Eventual consistency within replicaset partition

when using asyncronous replication
Immediate Consistency within single instance
Sequential consistency including linearizable read within replicaset partition

when using Raft

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

Atomic execution of command blocks and scripts and optimistic locking

ACID, with serializable isolation and linearizable read (within partition); Configurable MVCC (within partition); No cross-shard distributed transactions

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

yes, cooperative multitasking

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Configurable mechanisms for persistency via snapshots and/or operations logs

yes, write ahead logging

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

yes, full featured in-memory storage engine with persistence

yes

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Role based access control and fine grained access rights

Access Control Lists (ACLs): redis.io/docs/management/security/acl
LDAP and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for Redis Enterprise
Mutual TLS authentication: redis.io/docs/management/security/encryption
Password-based authentication

Access Control Lists
Mutual TLS authentication for Tarantol Enterprise
Password based authentication
Role-based access control (RBAC) and LDAP for Tarantol Enterprise
Users and Roles

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Milvus is an open-source and cloud-native vector database built for production-ready...
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Competitive advantages

Highly available, versatile, and robust with millisecond latency. Supports batch...
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Typical application scenarios

RAG: retrieval augmented generation Video media : video understanding, video deduplication....
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Key customers

Milvus is trusted by thousands of enterprises, including PayPal, eBay, IKEA, LINE,...
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Market metrics

As of January 2024, 25k+ GitHub stars 10M+ downloads and installations 3k+ enterprise...
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Licensing and pricing models

Milvus was released under the open-source Apache License 2.0 in October 2019. Fully-managed...
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